Voice and Support

Voice and Support

“Maestro I want it to ask you something, I know that the principal tool and the most important thing to get the high notes are the closure of the vocal cords, after that comes with a lot of different things, some people put the voice more underground than others, like franco Bonisolli, but maestro Fisichella I feel that everything is on the mask he also has his voice underground not as much as Bonisolli, my question is What is right thing to do once you have the night notes, where is the right place to put the high notes?, is different for every tenor?”

My answer:

“The voice is born in the larynx. Where we do the glottal attack Ah Ah Ah Ah. But the voice’s body should not stay there. It has to be above the mouth, in the front, on the sides of the nose, between the eyes, and as you go high also it goes toward the forehead. It has to be like a laser and the body of the voice should not be in the mouth but stays above it in the frontal sinuses. But you have to be careful that you put voice, not air. Also the throat needs to stay relaxed like a yawn while you close the cords and get the voice up. This requires a lot of energy in opening the ribs and the upper abdomen and then keeping an energetic expansion. But then when you start the voice forget about the breath… you are expanded.. forget about it and focus on the sound. The right sound will keep the expansion. If you don’t get the right sound you will never have the right support.”

So often, we try to get the right sound by supporting. I find it’s the other way around. Once you expand the ribs and sternum and upper abdomen you need to really just forget about it and focus on the sound. Every time someone I work with gets the right sound in the high voice they say that the body supported. So I ask them “did you support or did it just happen?” and invariably the answer is “it just happened on its own.”

Of course, you have to set up the conditions of expansion and extended diaphragm, but nothing you do will support you into right voice. It will always be the sound that triggers the right support.

The energy under the cords on good high notes is significant. We don’t feel it as a push outward, in fact that is destructive. It is actually the opposite: an energetic resistance toward pushing out. But this doesn’t mean that the pressure is small under the cords. It just should be in balance: a strong resistance to the pressure by the cords, and a strong engagement in the body to regulate a consistent column of pressure under the cords. Thinking of the column of breath as a straight tone column I find helps. Often the vibrato degrades the phonation because the vibrato creeps into the column of breath and then eventually into the body where the body starts shaking with the vibrato and the longer you hold the note the more likely the cords start loosening as an increasingly energetic puff of air comes through on the bottom part of the vibrato cycle. If you think of the column of breath as “straight” (not the pitch, but the air), you are more likely to find the right consistency in the needed pressure. But in the end, it is the lean of the voice into the mask that gives the right regulation.